Congress Must Not Go on Summer Vacation Before Funding our Aviation System

August 2, 2011

Edward Wytkind, President of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), offered the following statement regarding the urgency of passing a funding extension for the Federal Aviation Administration:

“At this moment, 4,000 aviation workers are not collecting a paycheck and more than 70,000 construction workers’ jobs are at risk because Congress is playing ideological games. If Congress packs up and goes home for the summer without passing a clean extension of the FAA bill, these workers won’t be able to provide for their families, and the aviation system will lose $1.5 billion in revenues that it will never recoup.

“In the absence of a long-term FAA bill, Congress has extended the FAA’s existing funding levels 20 separate times without controversy. But this time, the House Republican leadership has held hostage the negotiations over this vital air safety, infrastructure and technology funding bill to get their way. The House’s FAA funding extension included controversial language that would cut air services in rural America as a way to put pressure on the Senate to get what they want: to make it harder to join and form unions.

View the full release here